The Worst Halloween Ever

Not this year, but I have a couple of them in mind. Since I feel the need to cleanse the palate and write about something unrelated to politics, I'll offer a couple of Halloween horror stories.

Since my daughter was born on October 30, her birthday and Halloween have always been joined at the hip. In 1992 the girl turned four but was not feeling well on her birthday. She was having abdominal problems and was really off her game. We had bought her one of those giant plastic climber toys for the back yard, and I remember working to put that monstrosity together while she laid on the floor inside the house and watched me. She normally would have been bouncing off the walls, but she was really down.

By the evening of her birthday she'd gotten worse and on our health plan the after hours doctor was the clinic at Children's Hospital in Orange. We took her there and before the evening was over she was admitted because of a severe flu that had actually shut down a portion of her small intestine. Nothing could get by that spot, so she was losing it out both ends. Pretty ugly.

The next day was Halloween and we spent much of it at the hospital. My wife had done the overnight shift and was exhausted. My turn would come that night. At dinnertime we left the hospital for a little while and went to the nearby Mall to grab some dinner. We sat there eating our Chinese food while all around us families with their costumed kids giggled and laughed and had a great time.

We were miserable. Worst Halloween ever. I've had tremendous empathy for parents with kids in the hospital ever since. Our girl, who loved costumes more than just about anything, was stuck in that hospital and it was killing us. Fortunately, we were able to check her out on Sunday and have her rescheduled birthday party the following weekend. She got to enjoy her costume and her new climber.

A distant second for worst Halloween would be 2003. For eight years my quartet had sung for a big community event at a church in Bellflower. It was always fun with big crowds and the whole family would go, hang out in the bus, or run around with the kids playing the various games and collecting lots of candy. I pretty much watched my kids grow up at that event since they were only 7 & 4 when we started going there.

In 2003 for the first time the family didn't join me. My daughter was now a freshman in high school, the boy starting junior high, and they had outgrown the little kid games. They decided to stay home and hang out with their friends. Mom stayed home with them and for the first time I went to that Halloween party on my own.

The group's bus was down for maintenance problems, so I had half our sound equipment in my Explorer and the other half was coming in my partner's pickup truck. When I got to Bellflower I found that I had a tire going down on the Explorer, so I had to run around in heavy traffic to find a gas station with a working air pump. To top it off, it was supposed to start raining sometime that night and the event was outdoors.

There was yet another mood crusher that night. I had become a huge fan of the Mission Viejo High School Football team. That night they were having their biggest league game of the year in San Clemente - one that threatened a winning streak of more than 30 games, and I couldn't be there. I really didn't feel like being in Bellflower without my family and missing that game.

I finally made it to the church and we started setting up. The weather was cold and damp and you could tell that rain was not far away. My tenor singer was late and stuck in traffic in L.A. and we were supposed to start singing in 10 minutes. I had thousands of dollars in expensive electronic sound equipment sitting in the open air and just as we were supposed to start, here came the raindrops. We had a mad scramble to cover the equipment. The guy in charge wanted us to move the entire set-up to a small space indoors, but by that time I had hit my limit. I handed him back the check for the performance fee, told him thanks but this just wasn't going to work, and we packed up and left. I was home an hour later. The kids had a great time on their own, and Mission Viejo won a close game in the rain.

Although we were invited back the next year, I've turned the event down since then. It just doesn't feel right to be there without the family.

Tonight we'll be spending Halloween at the stadium in Mission Viejo watching the same two teams play. This will be another tough game, but this time I'm going to be there to watch it. One kid will be off at college but the other one will be on the field with the band. As best we can do it, the family will be together. That's the way it ought to be.